1. True Christianity

Containing a Comprehensive Theology of the New Heaven and the New Church

The Faith of the New Heaven and the New Church

THE faith of the new heaven and the new church is stated here in both universal and specific forms to serve as the face of the work that follows, the doorway that allows entry into the temple, and the summary that in one way or another contains all the details to follow. I say "the faith of the new heaven and the new church" because heaven, where there are angels, and the church, in which there are people, act together like the inner and the outer levels in a human being. People in the church who love what is good because they believe what is true and who believe what is true because they love what is good are angels of heaven with regard to the inner levels of their minds. After death they come into heaven, and enjoy happiness there according to the relationship between their love and their faith. It is important to know that the new heaven that the Lord is establishing today has this faith as its face, doorway, and summary.

358. (c) We are also able to acquire the life within faith and goodwill for ourselves. The situation is again the same. We acquire this life as we go to the Lord, who is life itself. No one's access to him is blocked. He constantly invites every person to come toward him. He says,

Those who come to me will not hunger; those who believe in me will never thirst. Those who come to me I will not throw out the door. (John 6:35, 37)

Jesus stood and cried out, "If any are thirsty, they must come to me and drink. " (John 7:37)

The kingdom of the heavens is like someone who put on a wedding for his son and sent his servants to call those who had been invited. Finally he said, "Go to the ends of the streets and invite any people you find to the wedding. " (Matthew 22:19)

Surely everyone knows that the Lord's invitation or calling is universal. So is the grace to accept it.

By going to the Lord, we gain life because the Lord is life itself. He is not only the life within faith but also the life within goodwill. It is clear from the following passages that this life is the Lord and comes to us from the Lord:

In the beginning was the Word. In it there was life, and that life was the light for humankind. (John 1:1, 4)

Just as the Father raises the dead and brings them to life, so also the Son brings to life those whom he wishes to. (John 5:21)

As the Father has life in himself, so he has given the Son to have life in himself. (John 5:26)

The bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world. (John 6:33)

The words that I speak to you are spirit and are life. (John 6:63)

Jesus said,

Those who follow me will have the light of life. (John 8:12)

I have come so that they may have life and abundance. (John 10:10)

Those who believe in me, even if they die, they will live. (John 11:25)

I am the way, the truth, and the life. (John 14:6)

Because I live, you too will live. (John 14:19)

These things have been written so that you may have life in his name. (John 20:31)

He is eternal life. (1 John 5:20)

"The life within faith and goodwill" means the spiritual life the Lord gives people in their earthly lives.

501. These days people are asking why miracles do not happen any more the way they used to. There is the belief that if they did happen, we would all acknowledge God from the depths of our hearts. The reason miracles are not happening today the way they used to is that miracles are coercive; they take away our free choice in spiritual matters. They make us more earthly than spiritual. Since the time of the Lord's Coming, everyone in the Christian world has had the capability of becoming spiritual. We become spiritual solely from the Lord through the agency of the Word. If miracles induced us to believe, we would actually lose this capability, because, as I just mentioned, they are coercive and take away our free choice in spiritual matters. And when it comes to spiritual things, everything that is forced on us intrudes into our earthly self and closes the door, so to speak, to the spiritual level in us that is our true inner self. It deprives our inner self of all ability to see anything true in the light. After that, our only thought about spiritual matters would be reasoning on the part of our earthly self, and our earthly self sees everything that is truly spiritual upside down.

[2] The reason why miracles did occur before the Lord's Coming was that then the people in the church were earthly in nature and were not open to the spiritual matters that belong to the inner church. If spiritual matters had been opened up to them, they would have desecrated them. Therefore all their forms of worship were rituals that meant and represented the inner teachings of the church. The only way they could be induced to perform the rituals correctly was through miracles; and in fact not even miracles could persuade them, because there was something spiritual lying hidden within those representative acts of worship. This is clear from the fact that even though the children of Israel in the wilderness had witnessed so many miracles in Egypt and the greatest of miracles on Mount Sinai, Moses had not been absent for more than a month before they were dancing around the golden calf and shouting that it had led them out of Egypt. They engaged in similar acts once in the land of Canaan, even though they saw astounding miracles performed by Elijah and Elisha, and later on, the divine miracles performed by the Lord.

[3] The main reason why miracles are not happening today is that the church has denied that we have any free choice in spiritual matters. It achieved this by sanctioning the notion that we are completely unable to contribute anything to our own acceptance of faith, and that we play no role whatever in our own conversion or our salvation in general (see 464 above). People who have these beliefs become more and more earthly, and the earthly self, as mentioned just above, looks at everything spiritual the wrong way up and therefore decides against it. In that circumstance, the higher region of the human mind - the primary location of our free choice in spiritual matters - would be closed; the spiritual teachings that were apparently corroborated by the miracles would inhabit the lower, merely earthly region of the mind, while false beliefs about faith, conversion, and salvation remained fixed in place on that higher level. The result would be that satans would live on the higher floor and angels on the lower floor, like vultures above hens. After a while, the satans would break the dead bolt and burst in with a fury on the spiritual teachings that were allotted a place below, and would not merely deny those teachings but would blaspheme and desecrate them. Therefore for such people the situation afterward would be much worse than it was before.